The Importance of Words Ironism, Liberalism, and the Private/Public Distinction

Abstract

My purpose is to present a way of understanding the Rortian thesis around liberal duties of liberal ironists in order to vindicate the private/public distinction defended in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. To do this, I will try to clarify: a) the scope of Rortian ironism; b) its articulation with the particular version of liberalism that he defends; c) some distinctions between private and public uses of redescriptional resources which are usually attributed to the ironic esthete and not to the social reformer. The analysis will involve providing an interpretation in non-epistemic terms of the key notion of "final vocabulary" which is crucial in the Rortian characterization of ironism. I will attend to what is usually unnoticed: the fact that Rorty uses the expression "final vocabulary" instead of the expression "set of basic beliefs" to characterize the experiential attitude of the ironist. Ironist has a specific experience of crisis in relation to words that she considers important. Ironism does not involve in the first instance a change of propositional attitudes; it is not a matter of propositions that work as a limit to some justificatory practices (although such propositions may involve, in fact, the terms of the final vocabulary). Ironism is a matter of words; and our subjective connection with words of final vocabulary involves qualitative aspects, especially affective ones, which are overlooked if we only consider sets of beliefs in the characterization of the ironist attitude. Starting from addressing the Rortian appeal to last vocabularies as sets of words, I will show the fertility of using Harry Frankfurt´s characterization of the notion of "importance" to understand both the figure of the ironist concerned with her self-creation and that of the liberal worried about not humiliating others.